Over the last few months many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – including Telkom, G-Connect, Vox Telepreneur and Web Africa – announced significant ADSL data price cuts.<\/p>\n
In July G-Connect announced that it has dropped the price of its prepaid ADSL service from 6.5c per MB to 4.9c per MB, and from 4.7c per MB to 4.5c per MB for usage between 5pm to 8pm. This price cut was widely welcomed by consumers and the reduction set off a trend that was quickly followed by a few other ISPs.<\/p>\n
Vox Telepreneur recently launched a standard 1 GB shaped ADSL account, which includes 1 GB of data, at a price of R 50.00 per month. The cost of additional bandwidth is also R 50 per GB with the added benefits of being able to set their own monthly usage cap and they are only charged for bandwidth used.<\/p>\n
Web Africa was next to announce price reductions on its high usage ADSL accounts, dropping the price to R 49.00 per GB from the previous R 52.00 – R 74.00 per GB.<\/p>\n
Telkom Internet did not announce price cuts, but rather decided to up usage limits on the 2 GB and 3 GB accounts. All 3 GB subscribers’ monthly usage limits were bumped up to 5 GB, and at R 239 per month it translates into R 47.80 per GB and includes 30 GB of local bandwidth free of charge.<\/p>\n
All of the new prices hover around R 50.00 per GB, and this may well be an indication that R 50 per GB has replaced the previous de-facto ADSL data price standard of R 70 per GB. A few high profile ISPs, including Axxess and Web Africa, are still charging around R 70 per GB for prepaid ADSL data, but this may well change in the next few months.<\/p>\n
Web Africa CEO Matthew Tagg agreed that R 50 GB is the new benchmark for ADSL data pricing, but added he didn’t expect pricing to drop much more than this in 2009. “I don’t foresee it dropping dramatically more than that this year. You may see special offers coming in below this rate, but there will be strings attached,” says Tagg.<\/p>\n
“The reality is that Seacom hasn’t changed all that much, but the landscape will change once true competition arrives via WACS and EASSy. The dynamics of pricing are changing completely and the local rates are going to drop dramatically in the near future,” said Tagg.<\/p>\n